Light is the first thing that Subin registers when he wakes up. Specifically a stupidly bright colored light beam hitting him in the face.

  The second thing he picks up on is that he is not in his bed. His bed isn't this soft.

  This bed is egregiously soft, the kind that would normally kill his back if he slept in it due to lack of support. Annoyingly, his back instead feels better than it has in years.

  Like this stupid not-his-bed fixed the residual pain from all those years of shitty office chairs.

  With a sigh he sits up, pushing the also annoyingly soft comforter off of himself and looks around.

  A hiss sounds out as he takes a sharp breath in, and Subin's hands tighten their grip on the quilted comforter, scrunching what he can now see is a complicated constellation pattern.

  He’s still in the room from yesterday.

  He can see the study-like area from where he's sitting, and it looks almost exactly as it did earlier.

  Only this time, the chair is picked up, the stain is nowhere to be seen, and there isn't a speck of dust anywhere.

  “What the fuck?” He whispers looking around the rest of the room.

  Everything that was a mess was gone. No dust, no old tea cups or books left out of place.

  The only thing left where it was yesterday was an old book that had been open laying on the desk in the study area. Now it was closed, and set neatly in the center of the open desk area.

  This shouldn't be possible, not if it was a dream. They had never lasted this long.

  The nightmares always ended in him dying, and it was only the actions that led up to and included his death. Not extra days, not anything that had this… real feeling to it.

  He turns his gaze back to the comforter. It looks like it might rip on one of the intricate stitching lines from how tightly he's gripping it.

  ‘Calm down,’ he thinks, forcing himself to let go of the poor blanket, ‘I can't panic right now.’

  ‘Yesterday was for panicking, today is for… figuring shit out? Yeah that sounds good.’

  Subin sighs, and pulls the blanket back swinging his feet to the floor. He's in the same clothes from yesterday, thankfully.

  He doesn't know how weird he would feel about someone changing his clothes while he slept so he will take that as a win.

  The clothes felt like a strange mix of styles, they were clearly plain looking. His shirt was one of those flowy loose white ones you could see in a cheap pirate Halloween costume, and the pants were straight legged and dark grey. Overall a simple outfit, but everything felt very fancy.

  It was all made out of silky smooth fabric that didn't seem thick, but he wasn't cold like you'd expect.

  ‘Okay, weirdly expensive clothes?’ He thinks filing that information away.

  ‘What else is there?’ Subin turns his attention to the small details in the sleeping area around him. If he can find some clues, maybe he can get a better picture of his circumstances.

  The whole area is closed off by lattice-like room dividers aside from the gap where the stairs were, and the landing it was all on was about… 8? Maybe 9? feet off the ground floor. Subin wasn't sure when he was looking down from above but it felt like a completely different floor rather than a small loft area.

  The bed had a canopy frame on it, but nothing actually set up to drape over the bed. There were more room separators creating a space between the bed and the wall, and what might be a mirror beside the gap, but it was covered with a grey sheet, so he wasn't sure.

  Everything had subtle designs on it, of either constellation like patterns, or fancy etchings carved into the wood. A plush rug lay under the bed, with a complicated celtic style knot as the pattern.

  Getting up, he moves to peek into the space separated beside the bed.

  The area is small, compared to the rest of the room, only holding a vanity table, a chair, and a wardrobe. The mirror on the vanity was also covered for some reason.

  Inside the wardrobe were more outfits like what he was wearing, all in what seemed to be simple styles and neutral colors, browns black, greys, white and tan. Subin frowned slightly when all the clothes had the same texture as what he was wearing as well.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The more he found the less this felt like it could be an elaborate prank, because who would spend this much on clothes that go in a closet that was so unlikely for someone to look in?

  And why were the mirrors, or at least what he assumed were mirrors, covered?

  He frowned, turning away from those for now. Just in case it is a prank he doesn't want some stupid jumpscare or prank camera to surprise him when he uncovers them.

  ‘But if this isn't a prank then where am I?’ Subin chews on the inside of his lip at that, worrying it between his canines.

  ‘What do I do if this is in some way real? How would that even be possible, and then does that mean he's going to have to deal with all the things in his nightmares?’

  ‘Would he be fine? The things felt more like fantasy books than actual real life items and he's just a normal pers-’ Subin is pulled from the thought spiral as a pang of pain shot through his mouth from how hard he was biting.

  ‘Now was not the time for this dammit, that was yesterday. Today we keep it together. Maybe tomorrow we freak out but that's a tomorrow problem.’

  It's fine.

  Subin takes a breath and moves towards the stairs. The only thing he can do right now is keep his head, so that's what he is going to do.

  The stairs are… strange to say the least. There's nothing connecting them to the wall, and when Subin runs his foot over the first step there are no invisible wires attached.

  Thinking of how they moved yesterday, wires wouldn't have worked in the first place. Nor would magnets. They should have just gotten jumbled up or stuck as one giant mass if it was either of those.

  Placing his foot down, Subin starts slowly shifting his weight onto the stair.

  If this thing slips out from under him and he falls to his death (yes it's only like 9 feet at most and he'd probably survive but still) he would never live that down.

  It holds. Surprisingly well honestly.

  Keeping one hand on the wall he moves to the next step, and when that one holds too he figures it's safe enough to trust the rest of the stairs.

  There's no railing, which feels like a poor design choice, but the wall is textured stone bricks that jut out enough he feels like he could grab them if need be.

  When he gets to the bottom he stares at the study area in front of him.

  It is disturbingly accurate to his dream, and the thought makes his stomach turn.

  He doesn't want to think too much about it, but it's hard not to.

  There are some things that don't look like he remembers them though. The map on the table is different.

  Moving closer, he almost kicks over an old pot with a pair of mushrooms growing out of it.

  ‘I guess that one is supposed to be here?’ He thinks. It would make sense, since many of the other pots from before that had dead plants are laying empty in a neat pile by a stool.

  There used to be all sorts of plants in this space, some were herbs, and some were strange flowers.

  Subin takes a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment.

  ‘It's fine. If I just calm down, and try to remember what this room was like, I might be able to get somewhere.’

  In the nightmare he was writing in a book. It... might have been the one on the table he's not sure yet. But it was important.

  It felt... rushed. Not panicked fully? But close.

  There was tea on the table next to him, where the cup that was there last night had been.

  And the table map showed a small village centered on a hill. It was something he kept glancing at in the dream, like he was watching something?

  Now someone may have laid out a different map. This one was completely flat, only showing topographic lines for altitudes instead of the little models he remembered seeing.

  It showed what looked like a world map, with distinct continents, but he didn't recognize any of them.

  The shapes were completely wrong, and there were the wrong number of them.

  ‘Okay. Let's just. Think about this.

  ‘The stairs defy logic, weird world map, everything is very very similar to those stupid nightmares, and all of this feels very real.’

  Subin bites down on his lip again, closing his eyes and breathing in.

  ‘I don't want to, but I'm starting to think this could be real. And it's happening.’

  He turns to the table, to the book laying on it.

  If there was anything in this room that could help him in figuring out what was going on, it might be that.

  When he dreamt, he was the people in the dreams. There wasn't a clear line between him and them but they all felt different from each other.

  Their thoughts, feelings, and even bodies were unique to that person in that dream.

  The one from this room, he felt…

  Lost.

  Like there had been a hole inside of him eating away for who knows how long, and whatever he was writing was the only thing that mattered.

  Subin picked up the book, examining the cover with a small frown on his face.

  That was what got the man in the dream killed.

  He let someone attack him so he could finish writing.

  If there was something written in this book, then does that mean the dreams were all real?

  That this is somewhere other than Earth, and he somehow was seeing this place?

  Why would that even- he makes fucking croissants for goodness sake! He's not anybody special.

  ‘It's fine’ He reassures himself again.

  ‘Maybe it's blank. Maybe its a stupid dream from being over exhausted’

  With a creak, and a wince for the poor spine of the book, he flips it open, and the pages unfurl.

  Chewing at his lip, he stares at the page in front of him.

  It's a page full of rushed handwriting. The penmanship the person who wrote it had is evident, every word still legible despite the hurried slant and ink blots.

  At first glance a few words look smudged, crossed through and re-written beside them.

  The first line is what catches Subin truly off guard as he starts to read.

  ‘Hello Reader, as I shall call you. I am sorry for what I have put you through.’

  He slams the journal shut.

  “Fuck me.”